Cecil B. DeMille again spares no expense on this expansive war drama/romance starring Mary Pickford. As Angela Moore she’s a young American woman who travels to France in the midst of the Great War to retrieve her aunt and bring her back to the States. Meanwhile, Angela’s German American boyfriend Karl (Jack Holt) has been called to active duty in Germany, leaving her for months with no communication. 

The film has a lot of plot and it moves at a very brisk pace. The total runtime is just over one hour. Of the several complex set pieces and large scale action sequences the most impressive is probably the sinking of a luxury liner by a German U-boat that mirrors the…

It’s been a few years since I’ve read Hew Strachan’s The First World War: Volume 1, but based off what I remember, Mary Pickford and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Little American presents a remarkably accurate ground-level depiction of the first six months of The Great War.

The film opens in the middle of a series of cascading diplomatic escalations known as the July Crisis of 1914, in which German hawkishness, French pride, British indecision, and Russian insecurity allowed a mere provincial dispute over the German method of uncorking Cabernet Sauvignon to escalate into a global war*. Mary Pickford plays Angela More, an American citizen (brilliantly conveyed via delicate visual metaphors, subtle set decoration, and undetectable subliminal imagery) whose trans-Atlantic voyage…

THE LITTLE AMERICAN opens with a wonderful bit of cinema, a German-American takes a stroll outside his large estate and, peering through binoculars, looks to his left. A POV shot introduces Mary Pickford, hidden for a moment by a parasol then turning towards the man and smiling. He puts down his binoculars, then looks to his right. There, once again, is Pickford, smelling flowers and smiling at him, at us. The man, confused, pulls the binoculars down, looks left, looks right, then looks straight ahead, right into the camera - only to find Pickford yet again.

This trickery not only demonstrates director Cecil B. DeMille's playful technique, but also establishes Pickford as both an object of affection and a direct…

Throughout the history of modern naval warfare, it has been customary to follow certain rules. Specifically, it has customarily been agreed upon that neutral ships and civilian ships would not be targeted, unless they were carrying contraband. This was even codified into into international law by the First Hague Convention of 1899, the first example of multilateral international treaties dictating the conduct of warfare. This has thus always been the standard for modern naval warfare. And then World War I began. The Imperial German navy was considered underutilized early in the war and so, to bolster their influence, they began a plan of what is called unrestricted submarine warfare. Essentially, German U-boats were given the green light to sinks any…

The Little American is most fascinating today as a piece of wartime mood, a film where melodrama and propaganda are inseparable.

Released during the height of American entry into World War I, the film clearly channels anti-German sentiment into its emotional design, turning national conflict into personal violation and rescue narrative. That historical context is impossible to separate from how the film works, because so much of its tension depends on directing outrage toward enemy caricature rather than moral complexity.

What keeps it engaging beyond the propaganda dimension is Mary Pickford, who brings far more emotional credibility than the material strictly requires. Even when the plotting becomes overtly symbolic, she keeps the character grounded through quick shifts between innocence, fear,…